Ghosthunting Ohio: On the Road Again. John B. Kachuba
DaShane. “He would have climbed up that ladder, swung a rope around the gearwork on the telescope, placed the other end around his neck, and simply stepped off.”
The three of us stood there for a moment, and that’s when we heard a low growl from somewhere in the room.
“What was that?” Robert asked. “Did you hear that?”
We had our cameras and voice recorders going and DaShane asked aloud for the growl to repeat itself, but nothing happened.
“We all heard it, right?” I said.
Robert and DaShane said they had. We agreed that it was a human sound, rather than an animal, and that it had definitely come from within the room. At that point, DaShane tried provoking the ghost by speaking aloud in the room, taunting the spirit for its cowardice in committing suicide.
I am not a big fan of provocation, as I believe we cannot understand the thoughts or motives of those who have passed on, and so we should treat them with respect. I had been on other investigations, however, in which spirits were provoked, with mixed results, so DaShane wasn’t doing anything different from what other investigators have done. In any case, it didn’t work.
“What do you say? Should we try the dowsing rods?” I asked.
I use dowsing rods not only to uncover areas of high energy but also as a means of asking ghosts simple “yes/no” questions. I ask them to move the rods for “yes” and to leave them be for “no.”
Robert and DaShane filmed me while I held the rods. When DaShane asked if there was a spirit in the room, the rods slowly crossed one over the other—“yes.” We tried to determine the identity of the ghost and received a “yes” response when we asked if it was a brother of Dr. Smith. We also received a ”yes” answer when we asked if there was more than one spirit present although, oddly, none were identified as Smith.
After a while our team switched places with the other team. We hurried down the sidewalk in the freezing air to the slightly warmer Mitchel Building. In the telescope room, we all heard far-off music, in an old-fashioned style, although it was too indistinct for us to identify the tune. Considering the isolated location of the building and the fact that it was late at night with nearly subzero temperatures outside, we could find no logical explanation for the music. We heard it for a little while, and then it was gone.
In a small circular office in the building we detected a hot spot on the floor that fluctuated between 90 and 100 degrees. We used a remote thermometer that shoots a laser at a given point and measures precisely the temperature at that point. Everywhere in that room, except for the spot on the floor, measured in the low 70s; even the heating vent was only in the 70s.
Intrigued by this hot spot—haunted locations often have cold spots—we went down to the basement. There, we found pipes running below the floor of the office upstairs and thought that we had discovered the source of that high heat, but the pipes were only in the 60-degree range.
After several hours we concluded the investigation and packed up our gear. We briefed John Ventre on what we had found and told him we would meet with him again after DaShane and his team reviewed the many hours of audio and visual data they had collected. I did ask John, however, if Dr. Smith had had a brother. John said he did not.
A few weeks later, we met one more time with John for the reveal, as some ghosthunters like to call it. Before we started, John told me that he had been wrong when he told me that Dr. Smith did not have a brother; apparently, he had a half brother. Aha, I thought. Was it the spirit of Smith’s half-brother that had answered my question that night?
DaShane presented his findings, which were much more extensive than I thought they would be. There were several EVPs (electronic voice phenomena) recorded that night, including more music. A few shadows that remained unidentifiable were captured on video. Plus, we had the positive responses of my dowsing rods, as well as those on the K2 meters used by the other team (the K2 meters light up if spirits answer questions asked of them).
John, who considered himself a skeptic on the subject of ghosts, was impressed. The investigation did not prove conclusively that there was a ghost, or ghosts, in the Cincinnati Observatory, but it certainly provided enough data for one to think it was possible.
It would be wonderful to conduct another investigation there, perhaps this time beneath a full moon.
Spotlight On: Ascension Paranormal
Founded in 2007 by Michael Perry, the Cincinnati-based Ascension Paranormal group has five team members with an additional ten on call. The group’s services include paranormal investigations of any building or place public or private, and blessing and cleansing of any dwelling. Michael says, “We blend the spiritual and scientific together by using prayer and scientific equipment to document and release any entity at said location.”
The group’s favorite haunt is the Lake Hope area of southeastern Ohio. Michael says, “Lake Hope is close to many haunted places, including Moonville Tunnel, Moonville Cemetery, Hope Furnace, and Athens, Ohio. We go there every year for the history, beauty and, of course, the paranormal.”
You can learn more about Ascension Paranormal at aparanormal.com.
CHAPTER 3
Ross Gowdy House
NEW RICHMOND
THE BEAUTIFUL TWO-STORY GREEK REVIVAL HOME known as the Ross Gowdy House was built in New Richmond in 1853, during the town’s heyday as a steamboat-manufacturing center. Hard by the Ohio River, the brick house has been ravaged by floods over the years but has survived them all. The house is named after its first two owners, David Ross, a mayor of New Richmond, and Thomas Gowdy, who bought the house in 1865 from Roseanna Ross, one of David Ross’s relatives. Two other New Richmond mayors have also lived in the house. Now owned by the nonprofit Historic New Richmond, Inc., the house is open to the public as a museum and local historical center. And, of course, it is open to ghosts.
I didn’t know anything about the Ross Gowdy House until I met Melinda Smith, founder of Southern Ohio Apparition Researchers (S.O.A.R.), at the Queen City Paracon in Cincinnati, where I was a speaker. I stopped by the S.O.A.R. information booth, where Melinda’s knowledge and expertise in ghosthunting so impressed me that when she later invited me to join S.O.A.R. on an investigation of the Ross Gowdy House, I readily accepted.
I arrived early for the investigation at the house. It was a hot, dry July evening, and what Melinda and her team had not planned for was the band concert in the park right next door to the house. Now I like John Philip Sousa as much as the next guy, but tuba and sousaphone melodies are not conducive to a successful ghost hunt; we would have to delay until the concert was finished.
With time on my hands, I was able to walk around the front yard, admiring the Prussian blue columns of the front porch and the trim of the six-over-six windows set neatly in the brick walls. Inside the house, Melinda and some of her team members were setting up their gear. After a few minutes I went inside to join them and was pleasantly surprised to see Cheryl Crowell, an old friend with whom I had lost touch and had not seen for nearly ten years, who was now affiliated with the nonprofit that owned the house and would be on the investigation with us.
Also inside the house was Greg Roberts, a local historian who knew everything there was to know about the house and the city of New Richmond. Greg gave me a chronology of all the past owners of the house—always good to have when trying to uncover the identity of the resident ghosts—but there didn’t seem to be any murders, suicides, or other acts of violence and mayhem that often result in hauntings. With the exception of the periodic floods, life at Ross Gowdy House appeared to be peaceful and serene. But peaceful and serene could be good hunting grounds for ghosts, too: there is a theory that ghosts haunt the places where they were happiest in life. The Ross Gowdy House could be such a place for those ghosts. I wondered if the house, so close to the river, could